Eroticism permeates the narrative, fleetingly yet profoundly, and the nimbus of poetry. God’s Zoo is ultimately a beautiful coming-of-age love story, one written in a deeply personal style (is it even possible to write otherwise?), but in which the reader may nevertheless find a sense of familiarity.

The challenge, taken up here with fervent nostalgia, is to blend a satirical, ironic tone with a childish depiction of events, an irony that confronts the figures of oppression, whether Communist or Nazi, and the adult world. The result is a lucid phantasmagoria: onboard his electric train, Fenix recounts the tragedies that, one after another, carry away his loved ones. Like many writers, recounting the events of his life allows him to shed its cruelties … As Baudelaire once wrote: “Genius is childhood rediscovered by an act of will.”